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"Indie author" used to describe a method. You self-published, full stop, rather than going the traditional route through an agent and a publishing house. That definition is loosening. A growing thread in indie publishing coverage right now points to something different: authors who move between publishing methods project by project, rather than committing to one lane for an entire career.

What "Hybrid" Actually Looks Like

The shape of it varies from author to author, but a few patterns recur....

Direct-to-reader sales have been a growing trend in indie publishing for a while now, but the setup has always come with a real cost: building a website, integrating an e-commerce platform, handling payment processors, shipping, and sales tax. On August 18, Lulu introduced its new Direct Buy Button to address that friction point head-on.

What It Actually Does

The Direct Buy Button is a checkout link or embeddable button an author can create for any print book published through Lulu, with no...

Every self-published author eventually hits the same fork in the road: stay exclusive to Amazon through KDP Select, or go wide and put your ebook everywhere else too. It comes up constantly in author groups, and, like the McFadden advice debate, the discourse tends to split into camps, each convinced the other is wrong. They're not, really. Here's what each path actually gives you, and what it costs.

What KDP Select Actually Is

KDP Select means your ebook is exclusive to Amazon, in 90-day...

A video made the rounds recently with a pretty direct title: "I'm an Editor. Please Don't Take Freida McFadden's Writing Advice." It's a pushback on McFadden's now-famous stance, the one she's repeated in interviews and on her own website: stop procrastinating, just write the book, put it out there, and fix what needs fixing later. An editor's perspective on that advice is worth hearing, especially from someone who's worked inside traditional publishing and seen what a polished, agent-ready...

The conversation around AI and publishing has been loud, and much of it has centered on fear, flooded marketplaces, disclosure fights, and bans on award eligibility. But a quieter, more measured narrative has been building beneath all that noise, and it's worth paying attention to: for many indie authors, AI isn't being used to write books at all. It's being used to run the business around the books.

The Shift in the Conversation

Writer and developmental editor Diane Callahan, of the Quotidian...

Walk into any online book community, and you'll notice it: readers picking up a beloved decades-old classic and bouncing off it hard, while a book published six months ago gets devoured in a weekend. It's not that older books are worse; plenty of them are genuinely brilliant, but something about how books are written and read has shifted enough that the reading experience itself feels different. Here's a look at what's actually changed.

Pacing Has Fundamentally Sped Up

Books from several...

There's a reason morally gray main characters keep dominating the bestseller lists for dark romance, fantasy, and thrillers. Readers aren't just tolerating them; they're actively seeking them out, sometimes over the clearly "good" alternative. Here's a look at what's actually going on when a reader falls for a character who probably shouldn't be fallen for.

They Feel More Real

Purely good characters are aspirational. Morally gray characters are recognizable. Most people don't experience...

Okay. I need to talk about Lights Out because I finished it, and I have been thinking about Josh and Aly ever since, in a way that is probably not entirely healthy, but here we are.

If you haven't read this one yet, Lights Out follows Aly, a trauma nurse who has a very specific, very private fascination with masked men online. Then one night, one of those masked men breaks into her house. What follows is dark, tense, occasionally unhinged, and somehow also laugh-out-loud funny, which should...

Publishing has traditionally offered authors two well-worn paths: land a traditional deal or self-publish. In the last few years, a third option has grown into something authors at every level, from brand-new indie writers to genuinely massive bestselling names, are using deliberately: crowdfunding the book directly through Kickstarter. Here's what that route actually looks like, and how it differs from the other two.

The Traditional Route

A traditional deal means an advance from a publisher in...

A recent episode of The Indy Author Podcast tackled a topic that eventually touches almost every indie author: what happens to a book after its launch window closes. Host Matty Dalrymple sat down with Jeff Elkins, author of thirteen novels and founder of The Dialogue Doctor, to talk through what it looks like to give older, lightly-marketed titles a second life.

The Assumption Being Questioned

A lot of indie publishing advice over the past decade has rested on a few core assumptions: that...

"Rights deals" comes up a lot in publishing conversations, but it's one of those terms that gets thrown around without much explanation of what it actually means. Here's a plain breakdown of what these deals are, the different types that exist, and what's generally involved, no verdict on what any author should do with that information.

The Basic Idea

When you self-publish, you typically hold all rights to your book. A rights deal is simply an agreement where you license or sell a specific...

The Nebula Awards spent one very chaotic day at the end of last year proving just how unresolved the question of AI still is in publishing. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association briefly opened the door to partial AI use in nominated works, with a disclosure requirement so voters could decide for themselves. Within hours, after backlash, they reversed course entirely and moved to a blanket ban: any work that used LLM tools at any point in its writing process would be disqualified...

There's a shift happening in how indie authors talk about social media, and it's a healthy one. For years, the assumption was "just be everywhere." In 2026, the conversation has matured into something more useful: which platforms are actually earning their keep, and when is it smarter to just walk away from one entirely?

You Can't Be Everywhere, and You're Not Supposed To Be

The Alliance of Independent Authors put it plainly in a recent piece pulled from their member magazine: spreading...

If you've ever hired a proofreader and called your manuscript "edited," you're not alone, and you're also not quite finished. Developmental editing is the step most indie authors either skip entirely or discover too late they needed. Here's what it actually is, and why it matters more than almost anything else you'll pay for as a self-published author.

What Developmental Editing Actually Is?

Developmental editing happens early, before line editing, before copyediting, before anyone's fixing...

It's easy to find doom and gloom about self-publishing if you go looking for it. But scroll through what the actual indie publishing blogs are covering this month, and a different picture shows up: authors building real businesses, finding new revenue streams, and proving the old gatekeepers were never the only way in. Here's what's got people excited.

Direct-to-Reader Stores Are Having a Moment

More indie authors are building out their own storefronts instead of relying solely on the big...

If you've felt confused about what AI companies can and can't do with your writing, you're not alone, and the confusion isn't your fault. This is one of the fastest-moving legal questions in publishing right now, and even courts are still working it out. Here's the good news up front: the ground is shifting in authors' favor, and understanding why the disagreement exists in the first place makes the whole picture much less overwhelming.

The Actual Disagreement

At the center of this is one legal...

Indie publishing got a new milestone this year. Kirkus Reviews, the outlet whose starred reviews have quietly shaped which books get noticed for decades, launched its first-ever Indie Awards in 2026, and the finalists are officially in.

Six finalists were named in each of eight categories: History & Biography, Memoir, Literary Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Romance, Picture Book, and Children's Literature. That's 48 independently published titles getting...

Summer's winding down, which means it's the perfect window to stock the TBR pile before October reading lists take over. This August has quietly delivered one of the stronger indie horror lineups of the year, and a few of these are worth grabbing now while pre-orders are still open.

A Bitter Butcher Revival

Kelsey Christine McConnell's new release from Evil Twin Press (out August 18) sends a disabled horror fan to a rental cabin in rural Montana, only for the anniversary of a 25-year-old...

For most of publishing history, audiobooks were a luxury reserved for authors with big budgets or big backlists. Traditional narration runs around $5,000 and eats roughly 40 hours in the recording booth. That math simply doesn’t work for most of us — which is why fewer than 5% of books ever become audiobooks in the first place.

That’s changing fast, and ElevenLabs is leading the shift.

The platform now offers a dedicated audiobook production suite called Projects, paired with a newer voice...

If you're a horror reader, August is not a month to catch up on your TBR pile — it's a month to watch it grow. Between a landmark anniversary edition from the genre's most recognizable name and a wave of new voices pushing the genre in strange, exciting directions, there's a lot worth talking about this month.

Stephen King's "It" Turns 40

The biggest release of the month isn't new at all — it's a 40th anniversary special edition of Stephen King's "It," out now from Scribner. This isn't a simple...